Our recently departed* finance Minister is causing a stir in Brussels by wishing to change the definition of copyright from an economic incentive into a welfare system for musicians. Techdirt doesn’t pull any punches, calling it “a total and complete bastardization of copyright law”. (There are echoes of the Spatial Strategy and Decentralisation here, methinks).

In addition, he supports the implementation of a levy on various recording devices, so that you pay for piracy even if you don’t pirate! Nice..

Copyright is where all the battles seem to be these days, with insufficient people looking at alternative ways of earning money in the Internet era, where copying is what makes the Internet so powerful in the first place.